Multifaceted Geotagging for Streaming News

News sources on the Web generate constant streams of information, describing the events that shape our world. In particular, geography plays a key role in the news, and understanding the geographic information present in news allows for its useful spatial browsing and retrieval. This process of understanding is called geotagging, and involves first finding in the document all textual references to geographic locations, known as toponyms, and second, assigning the correct lat/long values to each toponym, steps which are termed toponym recognition and toponym resolution, respectively. These steps are difficult due to ambiguities in natural language: some toponyms share names with non-location entities, and further, a given toponym can have many location interpretations. Removing these ambiguities is crucial for successful geotagging. To this end, geotagging methods are described which were developed for streaming news. First, a spatio-textual search engine named STEWARD, and an interactive map-based news browsing system named NewsStand are described, which feature geotaggers as central components, and served as motivating systems and experimental testbeds for developing geotagging methods. Next, a geotagging methodology is presented that follows a multifaceted approach involving a variety of techniques. First, a multifaceted toponym recognition process is described that uses both rule-based and machine learning–based methods to ensure high toponym recall. Next, various forms of toponym resolution evidence are explored. One such type of evidence is lists of toponyms, termed comma groups, whose toponyms share a common thread in their geographic properties that enables correct resolution. In addition to explicit evidence, authors take advantage of the implicit geographic knowledge of their audiences. Understanding the local places known by an audience, termed its local lexicon, affords great performance gains when geotagging articles from local newspapers, which account for the vast majority of news on the Web. Finally, considering windows of text of varying size around each toponym, termed adaptive context, allows for a tradeoff between geotagging execution speed and toponym resolution accuracy. Extensive experimental evaluations of all the above methods, using existing and two newly-created, large corpora of streaming news, show great performance gains over several competing prominent geotagging methods

ASSESSMENT OF NEIGHBORHOOD VITALITY IN DOHA

Well-functioning urban environments are good causes of societies living healthily and happily. The performance of the public realm plays an important role, in this regard, where societies are in direct contact with their physical environment. Urban environments should be created in which economic prosperity, social cohesion, and citizenship occur. The concept of urban vitality achieves this through being concerned with the socio-cultural, experiential, and spatial dimensions of the urban environment. On the scale of intimate communities, vitality plays a significant role in encouraging behaviours, social interactions, in the neighbourhood. Three domains are studied to define urban vitality: the society, its activities, and its physical environment. Considering the local context of the thesis, the rapid growth of vehicle-oriented neighbourhoods in Doha is leading to a decline in their degree of vitality. In many cases, this leads to a lower quality of urban life and a decline in the vitality of the city. Therefore, this thesis aims to assess the degree of neighbourhood vitality in Doha in order to recommend actions for areas of improvements. Study neighbourhoods are selected based on their geographical location within Doha and filtered by the average population density. Fereej Bin Mahmoud (downtown), Al-Thumama (suburban), and Al-Dafna (waterfront) neighbourhoods were selected. The assessment is approached through establishing a neighbourhood vitality index which was aggregated from the individual scores of socio-cultural, experiential, and spatial dimensions of neighbourhood vitality. This approach is supported by three data collection tools: questionnaire survey, observations, and semi-structured interviews. A total of ninety questionnaires were collected from residents, along with six neighbourhood observations, during morning and evening hours to study the functionality of the public realm. Results of the vitality index calculations showed that downtown and suburban neighbourhoods were indexed as moderately vital, whereas waterfront neighbourhoods were indexed as vital. Results of the analysis showed that three main factors should be considered to enhance the degree of vitality in neighbourhoods: culture, climate, and context. Planning and design approaches should consider these factors to create well-functioning public realms through accessible streets and shaded, green public spaces

Complexities of land use planning and nation building in Nigeria's new capital city of Abuja

PhD ThesisPolicy implementation tends to be a nightmare in the South as they mostly end up unimplemented. New capital cities of the South also reflect this nightmare. In Nigeria’s new capital city of Abuja, master plan making is considered of intrinsic importance toward promoting national identity in a diverse ethnic society. However, despite a history with series of master plan making spanning over 3 decades, implementing the land uses captured in these plans tend to be difficult. This thesis explores the complexities that underline land use implementation in Abuja’s Central Area. It seeks to make sense of the problems undermining implementation in Abuja’s Central Area. But beyond that the thesis explores the Western notions that have gone into Post-Independence nation building in new capital cities. Investigating these concerns draw insights from a multi-disciplinary body of knowledge. From policy implementation, rational planning process and action-based notions of implementation, relational planning, political economy, post-colonial critique of planning in the South, nationalism, and a wide range of themes on national capital cities. Using these insights, I develop a framework of exploring these concerns of the thesis through an inductive and qualitative process. The thesis’ findings center around what I refer to as plan gravity. Plan gravity is the privileging of Abuja’s master plans as not only being the most important thing in Abuja, but the answer to the aspirations that Abuja as a new national capital city seeks to achieve. But the privileging leads to the marginalisation and neglect of other factors that are vital to implementation; for instance the planning system under which these plans are expected to be implemented. Again, despite the privileging, implementation is undermined by a multiplicity of actors’ interests, power play and politics, the influx of global mega projects into Abuja’s Central Area, and the kinds of Western knowledge that have driven nation building in Abuja

City morphology and effective control mechanisms: towards land use optimization and sustainable development: a case study of Lagos mega city.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Rapid urban growth and resultant modifications to the environment have significantly changed urban morphologies. Given the rapid growth of metropolitan Lagos and its constrained access to land, spontaneous, muddled patterns of development have resulted in unsustainable development with varying consequences for the environment and its inhabitants. These have implications for carrying capacity, aesthetics, resources and urban liveability and call for policy formulation and measures to plan and control development patterns. The hypothesis of the study was underpinned on the argument that land utilization and control of urban spatial growth are functions of adequate planning and effective frameworks in achieving sustainable development. The study provides a framework for assessing urban structure and morphology with a rationale for planning sustainable cities. It reviews the dynamics of urban growth and its complexities alongside planning and design methods and approaches. The study notes that different elements of cities respond to various stimuli that should be taken into account in seeking to achieve sustainable development. Lagos mega city’s policies and spatial development strategies have, unfortunately, not done so. Guided by critical and pragmatic theory, the study employed triangulated mixed methods to assess the morphology and temporal growth of Lagos mega city and the factors that influence it; it examined urban planning frameworks, policies and control mechanisms; implementation, enforcement and compliance. Three study areas (Lagos Island, Apapa and Victoria Island) were purposively selected as case studies and data were collected through onsite surveys and observation; interviews with planners and the administration of questionnaires to property owners. The findings show that the metropolis is characterized by poor land utilization and ineffective control of urban development which is constrained due to surrounding water bodies and burdened by rapid population growth. The hypotheses tested using the T-Test statistic indicate that while poor land utilization and uncontrolled urban spatial growth are not exclusively a function of poor planning and ineffective frameworks, changing city functions and urban growth have implications for land use that require forward planning. The study therefore developed the Land Use Optimization and Effective Control Model that encapsulates approaches, process and factors towards compact, mixed-use development for a sustainable urban form. The model will guide planning agencies and development plans to align with the objectives of sustainability

Framework-level resource awareness in robotics and intelligent systems. Improving dependability by exploiting knowledge about system resources

Wienke J. Framework-level resource awareness in robotics and intelligent systems. Improving dependability by exploiting knowledge about system resources. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2018.Modern robots have evolved to complex hardware and software systems. As such, their construction and maintenance have become more challenging and the potential for failures has increased. These failures and the resulting reduction of dependability have a considerable effect on the acceptance and usefulness of robotics systems in their intended applications. Even though different software engineering techniques have been developed to control dependability-critical aspects of such complex systems, the state of the art for experimental robotics and intelligent systems is that – if at all – functional properties are systematically controlled though techniques such as unit testing and simulation runs. Yet, system dependability can also be impaired if nonfunctional properties behave unexpectedly. This thesis focuses on the utilization of system resources such as CPU, memory, or network bandwidth as an important nonfunctional aspect, which has not received much systematic treatment in robotics and intelligent systems so far. Unexpected utilizations of system resources can have effects ranging from merely wasting energy and reducing a robot’s operational time to a degradation in its function due to processing delays. Even safety-critical situations can arise, for instance, if a motion planner or obstacle avoidance component cannot react before a collision. Therefore, the systematic analysis of a system’s resource utilization, a guidance of developers regarding these aspects, and testing and fault detection for unexpected resource utilization patterns are an effective contribution of this thesis towards more reliable robots. In this work I describe a concept for integrating resource awareness into component-based robotics and intelligent systems. This concept specifically addresses the often loosely controlled development process predominant in experimental research. As such, the presented methods have to be applicable without a high overhead or large changes to the evolved development methods and system structures. Within this concept, which I termed framework-level resource awareness, I have explored methods in two directions: On the one hand, a set of tools helps developers to understand and systematically control the resource utilization while developing and testing systems. On the other hand, I have applied machine learning techniques to enable autonomous reactions at runtime based on predictions about the resource utilization of system components. With the two views, this work explores novel directions for implementing resource awareness in research systems and the conducted evaluations underline the suitability of the framework-level resource awareness concept

Liveability analysis of gated and non-gated low middle income communities in kuala lumpur, Malaysia

The aim of this paper is to examine the liveability conditions in gated and non-gated low middle income communities in Kuala Lumpur where rapid urban growth has led to many disruptions in the urban living environment. Hence, a livability framework was developed with dimensions from housing condition, economic condition, functional environment, social relations and community safety towards achieving the research objectives of – a) to study the liveability level in gated and non-gated communities, b) to compare the level of liveability between gated and non-gated communities, and c) to determine the dimensions and indicators which influence the level of liveability in both communities. Residents’ views were collected through a questionnaire survey which consisted of twenty-four indicators of liveability belonging to five dimensions from three communities in Kuala Lumpur. Two communities belong to non-gated and one community had gated living status. The findings of the research revealed that gated community has a better living conditions compared to the non-gated community. Thus, this research can be used as a turning point to improve the living environment of both gated and non-gated communit